The verdict, which was first published in the Los Angeles Times, marks the end of a tumultuous career for the 80-year-old contemporary art dealer, who now faces a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.

Allegations of fraud and dirty dealing have followed Chrismas since the 1970s. But the dealer, who was once considered among the most powerful in the US, with a roster that held names as influential as Richard Serra and Ed Ruscha, was long able to avoid prosecution, despite accusations of fabricating works, withholding payments to his artists, and refusing to return works that hadn’t sold.

The first major lawsuit came in the mid-1970s when artist Robert Motherwell sued him for the disappearance of nine works. A decade later, Chrismas was accused of losing $1.2 million worth of art that collector Frederick Stimpson had given Ace Gallery for safekeeping; he spent three days in jail on felony grand theft charges.

His current situation stems from the latest in a string of bankruptcy filings. In 2013, unable to pay rent on his 30,000-square-foot flagship gallery on LA’s Miracle Mile, Chrismas filed for Chapter 11. During the bankruptcy proceedings, which took place between 2013 and 2016, Chrismas remained Ace Gallery’s president, trustee, and custodian.

It was during this time that prosecutors said Chrismas embezzled $264,595 from the bankruptcy estate by writing checks to the Ace Museum, a nonprofit corporation that Chrismas owned and controlled, and securing funds owed the gallery from previous sales, some of which was given to Ace Museum’s landlord for the space’s $225,000 monthly rent.

According to the Los Angeles Times, prosecutors said during the trial that Ace Museum was meant to be “the culmination of [Chrismas’s] life’s work.”

“He wanted a legacy and he was willing to use other people’s money to buy that legacy,” David Williams, an assistant US attorney, said during the trial. “You can’t chase your dreams with somebody else’s money. That’s called stealing.”

Chrismas’s attorney, Jennifer Williams, disputed these claims during trial, saying “There’s no evidence, zero evidence that Mr. Chrismas as the owner of the gallery couldn’t make loans himself to other companies within his gallery universe.”

Chrismas was arrested by the FBI in July 2021 on three federal counts of embezzlement, and released the following day on $50,000 bail. In 2022, a federal court ordered Chrismas to pay $14.2 million in a bankruptcy case that dated back to 2013.

A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for September 9.

THE HEADLINES

EMBEZZLEMENT CONVICTION. Douglas Chrismas, the 80-year-old, notorious founder of Los Angeles’s defunct blue-chip Ace Gallery, has been convicted of embezzlement by a jury. The May 31 ruling in a Los Angeles court means the once powerful dealer, who has been the defendant in over 55 lawsuits, some of which were for stealing artworks and not paying artists, faces up to 15 years in federal prison. In less than an hour, according to the Los Angeles Times, the jury found Chrismas guilty of three separate counts of embezzling a total of over $260,000 from Ace Gallery’s bankruptcy estate while acting as trustee and custodian of the bankruptcy estate. Chrismas had “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” when he illegally deposited those funds towards an entity called Ace Museum in 2016, Asst. U.S. Atty. Vallerie Makarewicz told the jury. Meanwhile, the defense argued Chrismas “was desperate to save his business,” and had understood his Ace Museum legacy project to be part of the bankruptcy estate property. The jury, however, wasn’t buying it, and a sentencing is scheduled for September 9.

RESTITUTION ERROR. In a complicated case, judges for the US Fifth Circuit court ruled the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston can keep an 18^th century painting by Bernardo Bellotto that was looted by Nazis and accidentally restituted to the wrong person right after WWII, reports The Art Newspaper. Their decision upholds a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit brought by the Jewish heirs of its original owner Max J. Emden. Emden sold the work under duress, but it was confused with another Nazi-looted painting that was painted after the original Bellotto, by an anonymous artist. Allied forces recovered both paintings, but the Dutch Art Property Foundation for restitution claims erroneously gave the original painting to a claimant who had only requested the copy. The mistaken restitution could not be challenged by US courts, which are forbidden to judge another state’s acts of government done in its territory.

THE DIGEST

El Museo del Barrio in New York has named the 33 artists that will participate in the second edition of its recently relaunched La Trienal. Taking the title of “Flow States,” the show feature Carmen Argote, Christina Fernandez, Roberto Gil de Montes, Caroline Kent, Karyn Olivier, and Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya. [ARTnews]

Students and faculty demonstrated against the sudden closing of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts (UArts) yesterday. On Friday, the school belated announced to its student body and staff that it would shutter this week. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) also revoked the school’s accreditation on June 1, telling reporters the UArts “failed to inform the Commission of closure in a timely manner or to properly plan for closure.” [Hyperallergic]

The Ansel Adams Estate has hit back at Adobe for selling AI-generated images using the photographer’s name, allegedly on repeated occasions. Ironically, Adobe Stock’s own official policy terms don’t allow this, stipulating users are forbidden to upload AI-generated pictures “created using prompts containing other artist names or created using prompts otherwise intended to copy another artist.” [ARTnews]

A week out from Art Basel, one highlight to look out for at the fair’s Unlimited section is Christo’s Wrapped 1961 Volkswagen Beetle Saloon (1963-2014). Typically, the artist’s preparatory drawings of his monumental installations are made available for sale, making this large sculpture of an actual, wrapped VW Beetle, a rarity, for which Gagosian gallery is asking $4 million. [Bloomberg]

Two Bronze and Iron Age sets of treasure found in Dorset can stay in the county, thanks to a public fundraiser allowing the Dorset Museum to acquire them. The treasure includes a group of 40 coins from the second century BCE, made by a Gaulish tribe, and another stash including a Bronze Age axe head, bangle, and sword. [BBC]

The stories of how the Nazi’s looted and hid thousands of artworks is currently being told in three, simultaneous exhibitions in Austria. For the exhibit “The Journey of the Paintings”, the Lentos art museum in Linz is showing 80 works, including pieces by Goya and Titian, which were plundered and hidden in salt mines to build Hitler’s mega museum, the Führer Museum in Linz. The Altausse mine where they were hidden, and almost blown to bits, can still be visited. [El Pais]

The Kunstmuseum Bonn has named Friederike Fast as its new deputy director and curator. [Monopol Mag]

THE KICKER

WALK THE LINE. Walk south to north along the Thames and the small waterways on east London’s Greenwich Meridian line, and for some 8 km (about 4 miles), you can soak in the constantly evolving public art trail called The Line. From Antony Gormley’s cloud, to Tracey Emin birds, writer Andrew Jones for The Financial Times says “now is the time to visit or revisit,” the sculpture walkway. Doing so, “is to experience contemporary art, but also to explore areas of the city that had, until recently, been largely abandoned and closed. Here you will witness new neighborhoods springing up in historic settings, observe wildlife you may not have expected to see in the capital and spot Londoners slow down and connect with each other,” writes Jones. The path is divided into three sections Jones describes in detail, and the whole features around 25 works by established and emerging artists, including Gary Hume, Yinka Ilori, Eva Rothschild, Madge Gill, plus a new installation by Helen Cammock. Happy trails!

Online bidding has been open since August 12 for roughly 300 artworks that represent the last inventory of Ace Gallery, whose roster included sought-after artists for decades. The auction is being hosted on LiveAuctioneers, and it is being managed by ThreeSixty Asset Advisors, a firm whose specialities include the liquidation of insolvent businesses. The auction was first reported in the Art Newspaper.

Proceeds from the sale will be used to settle debts outstanding since Chrismas filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Bidding closes on September 13.

Chrismas founded Ace Gallery in 1967 and, over 50 years, built a formidable profile on its early promotion of marque talents in Minimalism, Light and Space Art, and Land art, including Richard Serra, Michael Heizer, and Ed Ruscha. A 2022 ARTnews exposé detailed decades of allegations of disappearing unsold artworks, withheld payments, financial mismanagement, and the fabrication of certain works. (The sculptor Donald Judd famously took out an ad in Artforum accusing the gallery of staging an exhibition “wrongly attributed” to the artist.)

Ace Gallery filed for bankruptcy in 2013 amid what Chrismas claimed was a real-estate spat with the gallery’s landlord. Three years later, after failing to post a court-ordered payment of $17.5 million, Chrismas was fired from Ace Gallery by Sam Leslie, the forensic accountant assigned to the gallery’s bankruptcy proceedings. According to the report Leslie filed with the court in May 2016, Chrismas also had some 60 artworks that had not been accounted for in his bankruptcy trial in a private storage facility.

In July 2021, Chrismas was charged with three federal counts of embezzlement. The following May, a federal court ordered him to pay $14.2 million in a bankruptcy case that began in 2013. By 2022, he was the subject of 55 lawsuits filed under his own name and various business names and had declared several bankruptcies.

The artworks and objects—described on the LiveAuctioneers website as “the final works in the ACE Collection and the end of an era”—are a paltry monument to Ace’s former holdings. Lots range from vintage Issey Miyake couture to a Chuck Close daguerreotype and several Chris Taggart sculptures.

The most highly priced work is a 1977 aluminum bench by Robert Wilson, the visual artist and theater director who founded New York’s Watermill Center. The bench (which has a broken leg, according to LiveAuctioneers) was created for Wilson’s play I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating. The high estimate is $29,200; the current bid is $2,900.

Chrismas was renowned for giving major talents, including Ed Ruscha and Michael Heizer, a platform early on at his now defunct Ace Gallery. More recently, a slew of allegations of financial mismanagement overshadowed his reputation. He was repeatedly sued by artists on his roster for withholding payments from sales and failing to return unsold artworks.

Ace Gallery filed for bankruptcy in 2013, but Chrismas continued to lead the business until 2016, when a court-ordered reorganization plan placed bankruptcy trustee and forensic accountant Sam Leslie in charge. (At the time, the gallery ran Beverly Hills and mid-Wilshire branches.)

While sorting through the business’s financial transactions and inventory of artworks, Leslie discovered that between February 2013 and February 2016, Chrismas had diverted around $17 million from the Los Angeles operation to two New York-based shell companies. According to the report Leslie filed with the court in May 2016, Chrismas also had some 60 artworks that had not been accounted for in his bankruptcy trial in a private storage facility.

Last July, the disgraced dealer was arrested on charges of embezzlement by FBI agents in Los Angeles. The indictment accuses Chrismas of redirecting some $265,000 from the bankruptcy estate of Ace Gallery to a separate corporation that he owned. He pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on bail. Meanwhile, Leslie had opened a civil suit against Chrismas over “these diversions of cash arising from sales of inventory,” Leslie’s attorney told the New York Times in 2021.

On May 4, the U.S. Central District Court of California ruled in favor of Leslie. The court cited the irrefutable evidence against Chrismas, who was ordered to pay $14.2 million in lieu of a trial. However, if convicted of all charges in his upcoming criminal case, he would face a maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.

The Headlines

THE LATEST FROM THE SALESROOM. On Tuesday night in New York, one day after it hauled in $195 million for a single Andy Warhol painting, Christie’s staged an evening sale of contemporary art with 29 lots that together earned $103 million, Angelica Villa reports in ARTnews. That result was only about half of what the same sale earned across 37 lots last year—one adviser described it as “lackluster”—and the total was not helped  by two Jean-Michel Basquiat works being withdrawn right before the action began. (One, a 1982 triptych, had been expected to earn $30 million.) Nevertheless, new artists records were set, via an Eric Fischl painting that went for $4.1 million (twice its high estimate) and a Helmut Newton photo that made $2.3 million. The auction action in Manhattan is far from over. Big-ticket sales continue in New York this week and next.

TROUBLE IN L.A. A U.S. court has ruled that veteran Los Angeles dealer Douglas Chrismas, the founder of Ace Gallery, must repay $14.2 million from art sales that he diverted into personal accounts amid a bankruptcy, the Art Newspaper reports. The verdict resulted from a civil suit brought by Sam Leslie , a forensic accountant who was appointed by a court to run Ace after it filed for bankruptcy. Separately, Chrismas is facing federal criminal charges that allege that he embezzled $260,000 from the bankrupt gallery. He faces 15 years in prison, and has pleaded not guilty.

The Digest

The Kicker

LOOKING FOR A NEW ENGLAND. The inventive sculptor Cornelia Parker, who is about to open a show at Tate Britain in London, sat down with the Guardian for an interview that touched on a number of political topics—Brexit, for one. (Parker advocated staying the European Union.) “It affects everything,” she said of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal. “Your freedom of movement, my daughter’s future. I’m thinking of applying for German citizenship because I’m half German. I don’t like feeling not part of Europe. I don’t want to be a little Englander.” [The Guardian]

Chrismas is currently facing three charges of embezzlement. If convicted of all three, the 77-year-old dealer could face a sentence of 15 years in federal prison. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and is expected to face trial in September.

A now-unsealed indictment from March accused Chrismas of embezzling $264,595 from the bankruptcy estate. The indictment, filed in the Central District Court of California, alleged that he embezzled $100,000 owed to the gallery as part of a purchase of an artwork from a third party, and put that sum toward his own corporation. Chrismas is also accused of embezzling an additional $114,595 owed to the gallery by a third party for a separate purchase, and of writing a $50,000 check from the bankruptcy estate that he signed and paid out to his own corporation.

Chrismas founded Ace Gallery in 1967 in Los Angeles and later opened a second space in Beverly Hills, as well as a venue known as the Ace Museum. Prior to its closure in 2017, Ace Gallery had been considered one of the city’s top galleries, having shown artists like Tara Donovan, Sam Francis, Tim Hawkinson, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, and others at formative stages in their careers.

Over the past five years, Chrismas has been plagued by allegations that his gallery withheld artworks and that he mishandled funds. In 2013, the gallery filed for bankruptcy amid what Chrismas claimed was a real-estate spat with the gallery’s landlord. Three years later, after failing to post a court-ordered payment of $17.5 million, Chrismas was fired from Ace Gallery by the forensic accountant assigned to the gallery’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Also in 2016, artists Mary Corse and DeWain Valentine filed legal complaints to re-obtain artworks allegedly being kept by Ace Gallery. Chrismas subsequently accused Valentine of owing the gallery money, which the artist denied.

ARTnews has attempted to reach Chrismas via the lawyer David Shemano, who represented him in 2016.